What Could Have Been
by Zylona
Summary: Five times Rory missed Jess after season 3. AU post7x21.


1.

It's her first class of her first semester in her first year of college. The professor is boring, mostly an asshole who obviously has an incredibly elevated opinion of himself. He probably drives a Hummer or a BMW convertible. Something that overcompensates for whatever flaw it is that he hides.

American Literature was never her favorite subject, but anything that involves books holds a special place in her heart that she can't even begin to put into words.

She sits with her laptop open on her desk and excitement making her fingers twitch across the keys. Her first official day as a Yaleie. Class starts, and the professor speaks for 45 minutes, and none of it quite registers even as her fingers fly across the keys. He assigns a Hemingway, and the first voice she hears in her head is his, "Ernest only has lovely things to say about you."

2.

There is an old broken down car outside of her dorm in the parking lot. She imagines for a moment that he's come for her, a rush of adrenaline at the thought that she didn't drive him away, that he had time to think over how insane his request had been. That he was coming back to ask for another chance, this time on her terms.

But a blonde girl steps out of the car, lugging out a heavy suitcase and rolling it through the doorway.

She feels her heart sink into her stomach, dragging her down, and all she wants is to collapse into a ball on the heated concrete.

3.

She lays wrapped in Dean's arms. It's warm and pleasant and he holds her tighter than is necessary, as if he can feel her slipping away already. The TV is on in the background, some local channel that plays nothing but syndicated sci-fi and weird 80s and 90s movies no one has ever heard of. But for some reason this one sounds familiar, even though the volume is sitting at 'barely a whisper'.

Her heard cranes around to try to get a glimpse of the screen. The man onscreen smiles ever so slightly at the female, handing her a jug and mouthing, "As you wish." She tenses and feels a knot tighten in her stomach, but the thought is pushed away by Dean mumbling and moving, drawing her even closer to him than she thought possible.

4.

The moment she steps out of the bookshop and into her car, the emotions crash into her. It's the only description; it's violent and messy. She can barely see the road in front of her and yet, she knows if she pulls off for a minute and sits by the road wallowing in whatever this power is, she'll turn her car around and go back to him.

But she can't afford that. Not now, not after so much time has passed. Not after all the times he's hurt her, and discarded her like she didn't even matter to him.

So she sits in her car, gripping her steering wheel as if her life depends on it, and cries for what she knows she wants: she wants him to be there for her, she desperately wants him to have never left and broken her heart, wants for him to have never ruined her ability to believe in him.

However, it is far away and long ago now, and she knows that it will diminish to a dull ache that slowly fades into oblivion as she distracts herself with life and school and Logan. She will forget how his lips feel on hers, and how warm his hand is as it rests lightly on her thigh, promising this and more.

And maybe some day she'll forget the nagging thought that he's the only one that's every truly been able to read her through-and-through. That he's the only one that has ever known her.

5.

She and Logan found a beautiful two-story Colonial in Connecticut, just 45 minutes outside the City, but quiet enough to raise a family.

If someone had asked her four years ago where she envisioned her relationship, the last thing that would've crossed her lips was married and moving into a house with four bedrooms for the possibility of children in the future.

So she's packing all of her clothing into luggage she could never imagine affording, with a 5-karat ring glaring in the sunlight as she grabs books and stuffs them into boxes. Her hand finds something tucked behind several large hardback copies of Dickens and Shakespeare. It's thin and worn feeling, like it was read too many times.

The title stares back at her, mocking her and causing her grip to go slack. She had forgotten, or if not forgotten, ignored. Ignored the feelings that book stirred up. Because she loves Logan and will always love Logan, and this book is her past.

A past she wants to leave behind, but one that creeps up on her when she thinks she's finally run far enough away. A past that seems to consume her whenever she lets it.

She considers throwing the book away. Giving it to a used bookstore, maybe. Donating it to the local library, as they undoubtedly don't have a copy. But she finds herself for what must be the 100th time, opening the front page to read what he wrote there, in his jagged, tilted scribble that barely passed as legible. And it was nothing, really. Nothing that would mean anything to someone who didn't know, but it made her heart pound faster and a lump form in her throat, choking her with the promise of what could have been.


End file.
